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  “He said he didn’t want to die a virgin.”

  “Travis, did you see Michael the day before he disappeared?”

  “I saw him on the lunch line.”

  “And how did he appear to you?”

  “Happy. He said he had a date that night with Junie.”

  “Thank you, Travis. Your witness,” Yuki said to L. Diana Davis.

  Davis was wearing a blue double-breasted suit with two rows of four large white pearl buttons and a triple strand of pearls at her throat. Her silver hair was crisp, almost sharp.

  She stood up and spoke from the defense table, saying, “I only have one question, Mr. Cook.”

  The boy looked at her earnestly.

  “Did you see Michael Campion go into Junie Moon’s house?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s all we have, Your Honor,” Davis said, sitting down.

  Chapter 51

  TANYA BROWN WAS ENJOYING HERSELF, giving Yuki a headache at the same time.

  Ms. Brown smiled at the bailiff, tossed her hair as she swore to tell the truth, and modeled her orange jumpsuit as if it were designed by Versace. She was the third of Yuki’s three jailhouse witnesses, all “in the system” for dealing drugs, prostitution, or both, and all of whom had met Junie Moon within the walls of the county jail. And while the testimony of jailhouse snitches was generally considered suspect or useless, Yuki was hoping that the virtually identical statements of these three women would together substantiate Junie Moon’s confession.

  Yuki asked Tanya Brown, “Did the prosecution offer you anything in exchange for your testimony?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “We didn’t offer to get you transferred, or get you time off or better treatment or more privileges?”

  “No, ma’am, you said you weren’t going to give me anything.” Tanya Brown wiggled her fanny in the witness seat, poured herself a glass of water, smiled at the judge, then settled down.

  “All right then, Ms. Brown,” said Yuki. “Do you know the defendant?”

  “I wouldn’t say I know her, know her, but we were cellmates one night at the women’s jail.”

  “And did Ms. Moon say why she was arrested?”

  “Yeah, everyone gets a turn at that.”

  “And what did Ms. Moon tell you?”

  “She said she was a working girl and that she had a date with Michael Campion.”

  “And why did that stick in your mind?”

  “Are you kiddin’? It was like, Whoa. You did the dirty with the golden boy? And like what was that like? And by and by it came out that he died when they were doing it.”

  “Is that what Ms. Moon told you?”

  “Yeah. She said he had a bad heart, and that happened to me once, too, but my john was no golden boy. He was a smelly old man, and he died in the front seat of his Caddy, so I just opened the door – oh, ’scuse me.”

  “Ms. Brown, did Ms. Moon say what she did when Mr. Campion had a heart attack?”

  “She got all weepy-like,” said Tanya Brown. “Said she and her boyfriend got rid of his body.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She said Michael was the sweetest boy she ever met and how bad it sucked for him to die on the happiest night of his life.”

  Yuki thanked the witness, made sure she didn’t roll her eyes as she turned her over to L. Diana Davis.

  Davis asked Tanya Brown the same question she’d asked each of Yuki’s previous two jailhouse witnesses.

  “Did Ms. Moon offer you any proof that she’d been with the so-called victim? Did she describe any distinguishing marks on his body, for instance? Show you any souvenirs? A ring, or a note, a lock of his hair?”

  “Huh? No, I mean, no, ma’am, she didn’t.”

  “I have no other questions,” said Davis dismissively, again.

  Chapter 52

  TWILLY PHONED YUKI at the office, asked her to have dinner with him at Aubergine, a hot new restaurant on McAllister. “I’ve got so much work to do,” she moaned. Then she relented. “An early dinner, okay? That would be great.”

  At six the restaurant was filling up with the loud pretheater crowd, but she and Twilly had a small table far from the bar, where it was quiet enough to talk. Twilly’s knees bumped against hers from time to time and Yuki didn’t mind.

  “ Davis is like an IED,” Yuki said, moving tiny bay scallops on her plate with her fork. “She blows up in your face at every checkpoint.”

  “Her act is getting old. Don’t worry,” Twilly told her. “She’s probably up every night worrying about you.”

  Yuki smiled at her dinner companion, said, “Hey. That’s enough about me.” And she asked him to tell her about his first true-crime book.

  “Must I? It sold about two hundred copies.”

  “It did not.”

  “It did, and I know because I bought all of them myself.”

  Yuki threw back her head and laughed, loosening up finally, feeling pleased that she had Twilly’s attention all to herself.

  “I wrote it under a pseudonym,” Twilly said. “That way if you were to Google me, that bomb won’t come up on the list.”

  “Well, now I know,” said Yuki. “So, what was the book about?”

  Twilly sighed dramatically, but Yuki could see he was just revving his motor before rolling out a story he loved to tell.

  “It’s about this country-western singer-songwriter in Nashville,” Twilly said. “Joey Flynn. Ever hear of her?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, well, about ten years ago, Joey Flynn had cut a couple of records and was making her way up the charts. ‘Hot Damn.’ You know that song? Or ‘Blue Northern’? No? Well, it doesn’t matter.

  “Joey was married to a carpenter, Luke Flynn, her high school sweetheart, and they’d had four kids before they were twenty-five. One day a fan brought Joey a hundred roses at this saloon where she was singing, and her heart went zing.”

  “A hundred roses…,” Yuki said, imagining it.

  Twilly grinned, said, “Joey messed around with this guy for three weeks before Luke found out and confronted her.”

  “Confronted her how?”

  “Rapped on the door at the Motel 6.”

  “Ouch,” said Yuki.

  “So that was the end of Joey’s affair, and Luke never forgave her. Over time, Joey caught on to the fact that Luke was planning to kill her.”

  “Really? How?”

  “How did she find out? Or how did he plan to kill her?”

  Yuki laughed again, said, “Both, and I think I’m going to have that chocolate mousse cake now.”

  “You deserve cake for the way you handled the governor today,” Twilly said, touching the sleeve of Yuki’s blue silk blouse, keeping his hand there for a long moment before he signaled the waiter. After ordering dessert, Twilly went on with his story.

  “Five years after her fling with that fan, Joey opens the cache in Luke’s computer and sees that he’s been looking up how to poison someone.”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “Joey writes to her best friend saying that if anything should happen to her, the police should question her husband. Ten days later,” Twilly went on, “Joey was dead. Potassium cyanide shows up on the tox screen, and Joey’s best friend turns the letter over to the cops, and Luke Flynn is arrested and charged with murder.”

  “This story reminds me of Nicole Simpson putting those Polaroids of her bruises in a lockbox for her sister in case O.J. hurt her.”

  “Exactly! So I write a book proposal, get a big advance on a six-figure contract, and I start spending time with Luke Flynn, who’s cooling his jets in jail while he awaits trial. And let me tell you, there’s no food like this near the prison in Nashville.”

  “Have the rest,” Yuki said, pushing two-thirds of her cake across the table.

  “You sure you’re done? Okay, then,” Twilly said, accepting the cake.

  Yuki said, “So what happened?”

 
The waiter dropped the check on the table and Twilly placed his platinum card on it, saying, “I’ll give you a lift to your car. Tell you on the way.”

  “Why don’t you follow me home in your car,” Yuki said. “The least I can do is make you coffee.”

  Twilly smiled.

  Chapter 53

  JASON TWILLY SAT in a loveseat in Yuki’s living room, an Irish coffee resting on the low glass table between him and where Yuki was sitting in an upholstered chair six feet away.

  Yuki was thinking that Twilly was too good-looking, and that she hadn’t had sex in so long she wasn’t sure she remembered how to do it. Now here was this big-time superstar who would surely break her heart if she let him, and she didn’t have time for fun, let alone heartbreak. She had a conference call with Parisi and the DA early in the morning, she had to prepare herself for the next round in this week’s trial of the century and go to bed. To sleep.

  Twilly was excited, hitting the climax of his story. “So now the DA has the letter Joey Flynn gave to her best friend, and turns out she also told her hairdresser that she was afraid Luke would kill her.”

  “I’m dyin’,” Yuki said. “You better tell me what happened, Jason, because I’ve got to be in bed in ten minutes and you have to leave.”

  “Come sit with me for those ten minutes,” he said.

  Yuki felt her heart banging in her chest. And she felt something else: her deceased mother’s clucking presence all around her – in the furniture, in the portrait on the wall – and she knew that her mom would want her to say good night and show the stranger out.

  Yuki got up and sat next to Jason Twilly.

  Twilly put his arm around her, leaned forward, and kissed her. Yuki moved into the kiss, put her hands in Jason’s hair, and was jolted by the hot shock of desire that shot through her body. It was incredible! But somewhere into the second kiss, when Jason ran his hand over her breast, she pulled away, gasping and flustered, her confusion burning off into certainty.

  She wasn’t ready for this. It was too soon.

  Yuki dipped her head, avoided Twilly’s eyes as he reached out and tucked a glossy fall of her hair behind her ear.

  Then, as if nothing had happened, he said, “The judge ruled the letter Joey wrote to her best friend inadmissible as hearsay, because a defendant, in this case Luke Flynn, had a right to confront his accuser.”

  “Who was, unfortunately, dead,” Yuki said.

  “Correct. But he allowed the testimony of Joey’s hairdresser. Luke’s lawyer put up a fight. Said the hairdresser’s testimony was also hearsay. The evidence went in anyway, and Luke was convicted.”

  “That’s kind of amazing.”

  “Bingo,” Jason said. “Luke’s lawyer appealed to the Tennessee State Supreme Court, and eight months later the conviction was overturned. As we speak, Luke Flynn is living in Louisville with his new wife and kids, making custom kitchen cabinets,” Twilly said. “As if Joey Flynn never happened.”

  “So let me guess: the story fizzled out. And you had to either write the book or give back the advance,” Yuki said, starting to breathe normally again.

  “Exactly. So I wrote Blue Northern, naming it after Joey’s song, and it bombed. But Malvo was a hit, and so was Rings on Her Fingers. And this book, the shocking story of the life and death of Michael Campion as told through the voice of the bewitching – oh, God, Yuki…”

  Jason pulled Yuki to him and kissed her again, and when she resisted, when she said, “No, I can’t,” he held her tighter, until Yuki jumped up and pushed him away, putting the coffee table between them again.

  Twilly’s face darkened. He was angry, and she understood: he’d read her libido, but not how much he was scaring her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just not -”

  “Don’t be a sorry mouse, be a happy Jappy,” Twilly said, interrupting her. His lopsided smile was forced, and he stood, followed her into the middle of the room, reached for her again as she backed away.

  Happy Jappy? What was wrong with him?

  Yuki walked across the pale green carpet to the door, opened it, and said, “Good night, Jason.”

  But Jason Twilly didn’t move.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted. “You flirt with me, invite me back to your place, now – hey! Listen to me,” he said, advancing on Yuki, gripping her chin hard with his thumb and forefinger, wrenching her face toward him.

  “I said no,” Yuki said, pulling out of his grip. “Now get out or I’m calling the police.”

  “Crazy bitch,” he said, and smiling coldly, he dropped his hands to his sides.

  Yuki’s heart galloped as Twilly walked slowly out of her apartment. She slammed the door shut behind him, bolted the lock, and leaned against the inside of her door until she heard the elevator door open and close at the end of the hallway. She went to the window and watched as Twilly stalked out of the Crest Royal and got into his car.

  His tires squealed as his black Mercedes shot down Jones Street.

  Chapter 54

  AFTER A GENUINE PSYCHO KILLER had been arrested in her building, Cindy had thought of adopting a dog for protection. Pit bulls were outlawed in San Francisco, and Cindy didn’t want an attack dog or a lap dog, and so her pursuit of the perfect watchdog had ended at Seth on Sixth, the pet store around the corner.

  Seth had said, “Take him. His name is Horndog.”

  Horndog was a peach-and-white Moluccan cockatoo, a relative of the bird Robert Blake used to have in his TV series Baretta. But Horndog was no movie star. He sulked in his cage plucking feathers from his breast, lifting his head to squawk whenever the door to the pet shop opened.

  “He’s depressed,” Seth said. “He needs a home. Anybody comes into your house, Horndog will let you know.”

  So Horndog had been renamed Peaches, and now that he was living with Cindy he was no longer depressed. Visibly happier, he now perched on Cindy’s shoulder, chewing a pencil into wood chips and softly chuffing to himself. It took a week or two for Cindy to finally translate that muffled mutter; Peaches was saying, repeatedly, “Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch.”

  “Pretty bird, pretty bird,” Cindy answered distractedly, sure that if she said it enough times, she could reprogram her bird.

  Tonight Peaches and Cindy were at her computer in her home office. Cindy typed a series of key words into a search engine: “home fires fatalities,” “home fires fatalities Bay Area,” “home fires cause unknown.” But each time she pressed the enter key, too much information flooded her screen.

  Cindy scratched the bird under its chin, refreshed her tea with hot water from the kettle, and went back to her desk. The clock icon in the bottom corner of her screen read 10:32 and she was still nowhere. She refined her search, typed “home fire wealthy couple.”

  “It’s unreal, Peaches,” she said, as dozens of links appeared on her screen. “Too much information!”

  Nearly all of the links led to the same fire, a house outside San Francisco that had been torched four years before. As Cindy scanned the articles, she remembered the story of the victims, Emil and Rosanne Christiansen, who had died before she was assigned to the crime desk.

  Emil Christiansen had been the CFO of an office machine company that had been bought out by a computer company. The Christiansens had become instant multimillionaires. They’d moved out of the city to a woodsy setting up the coast. According to the articles, the house had burned down before firefighters could reach it, and the Christiansens had died.

  The fire had been classified accidental by the firefighters at the scene, but when the couple’s son did an inventory of the remaining property, he reported that his father’s coin collection was missing and that his mother’s large emerald ring and a sapphire-and-diamond bracelet that was alone worth fifty thousand dollars were gone.

  At the bottom of the last article was a quote from the arson investigator, who had told the reporter, “A candle tipped over, papers caught fire, the curtains went
up, and so went the house. I haven’t found any trace of fire accelerant, so right now I can’t say if the fire was accidental or intentional.”

  Cindy typed, clicked, followed the links, found the medical examiner’s report on the Christiansens. The ME had given the cause of death as smoke inhalation and the manner of death “undetermined based upon the fire marshal’s report.”

  “Hey, Peaches. What about the missing jewels? Hmmmm?”

  “Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch.”

  Cindy’s mind churned with questions. The Christiansens had been robbed, so why, she wondered, had the arson investigator said he didn’t know if the fire was accidental or intentional? And here was a thought: Was it a coincidence that the arson investigator who worked the Christiansen fire was also working on both the Malone and Meacham homicides?

  Cindy knew the investigator’s name because Lindsay had talked about him. His name was Chuck Hanni.

  She put Peaches back into his cage and covered it. Then she got busy on the phone. First she called her editor.

  Then she called Lindsay.

  Chapter 55

  THE GIRL WAS HEAVY.

  She was sitting at the picnic table on campus, right outside the Jamba Juice Bar, facing White Plaza, sipping her Strawberry Whirl through a straw. She was wearing tent clothes: a long prairie skirt and a big red sweatshirt. Her skin was rough and her hair was mousy, and she was, in fact, perfect.

  Hawk lifted an eyebrow in her direction. Pidge nodded. They walked over to the picnic table and took seats, Hawk sitting next to the girl, Pidge sitting opposite.

  Hawk made a phone with his thumb and pinkie.

  “Ba-rinnng,” he said, making a telephone ring tone.

  “Hal-lo,” Pidge said, answering the call with his own thumb-and-pinkie phone.

  “Pidge. You get outta here, man. I saw her first.”

  “But I like her better, dude. I told you how much I like this woman.”

  The girl looked up, puzzled by the conversation going on around her. She looked at Hawk, sitting to her left, turned her head, and looked at Pidge. Then she dropped her gaze back to her laptop, where she was blogging an entry in MySpace.